Danish postal service to stop delivering letters after 400 years
31 comments
·December 22, 2025arbirk
dmix
And the reason the existing public corporation shut down service in Denmark
> citing a 90% decline in letter mail since 2000
bigfatkitten
So if I’m in Denmark and I want to send my friend a piece of paper with something written on it, what happens now?
I assume I have to go into the post office and send it as a parcel (at higher cost), rather than slapping a stamp on it and dropping it into the post box, but the effect is otherwise mostly the same.
CrossVR
From the article:
> Danes will still be able to send letters, using the delivery company Dao, which already delivers letters in Denmark but will expand its services from 1 January from about 30m letters in 2025 to 80m next year. But customers will instead have to go to a Dao shop to post their letters – or pay extra to have it collected from home – and pay for postage either online or via an app.
userbinator
In other words they've just privatised the mail service.
SoftTalker
More like contracted it out. You might be surprised at the amount of US mail that is delivered by contractors. They've just taken it all the way.
usr1106
But: You don't seem to aöbe able to pay the new provider in cash. You need to pay online or using an app. (I have no insights, just from reading TFA.)
clickety_clack
With a monopoly no less.
ursAxZA
We keep optimizing systems, but human life doesn’t necessarily optimize along with them.
When a society becomes fully efficient, people start craving the slow, the physical, the intentional.
Beijinger
There is nothing worse, than a rotten mail delivery system:
https://expatcircle.com/cms/underrated-quality-of-life-indic...
Many USPS outlets seem to be run down. But in my experience, mail delivery is pretty solid. And there is indeed a country without postal mail service. Panama!
foolserrandboy
Will companies be willing to pay more to send junk mail if it is no longer largely subsidized? In this regard it could be a good thing assuming they don’t already have a regulation against junk mail there.
FarmerPotato
Fifty years ago, I was given a coin bank styled after the red Danish Post letter box. That was in Solvang, CA. As these Danish immigrant-character communities (look also in Elkhorn, Racine, Greenville, etc) are little time capsules, you may have to travel to America to find a replica red slot to drop your letter.
The article wasn't clear how letters from outside Denmark will be handled, but maybe that's implicit in the Dao contract.
EDIT: maybe Royal Mail was never the Danish term, but I thought it was on a Lego set too...
usr1106
Slightly related: In Finland all official mail from authorities will become electronic by default starting Jan 1st, 2026. There is the possibility to opt out. I am not convinced this is a wise direction. When Putin cuts a couple of sea cables again we are not able to access official communications. Yes, even elections are stored offshore.
jmclnx
So, all they did was privatize their postal service. There will still have a postal service, but run by a private company.
I doubt this will end well, but Denmark is a small country so maybe it will work.
After a year it would be nice to see stats and compare delivery time, lost mail, cost between Dao and the old service,
dmix
It was already a corporate entity running it, just one owned by both Swedish and Denmark governments
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostNord?wprov=sfti1#
It is still the 2nd largest company in Sweden. They just gave up on Denmarks mail contract after the vast majority of people stopped sending mail and now another company is taking over the much smaller operation.
WalterBright
It's been decades since I wrote a letter and mailed it.
Tiktaalik
Writing some xmas cards right now and going to mail them in a bit. It's fun. You should try it out.
Fun to go shopping at craft fairs and give some money to indie artists for well made art. Send in the mail with a little note and stay in touch with old pals.
petra303
Which makes taking the time to send a letter have a lot of importance. I wrote a note to my mother and it meant a lot to her to get a hand written correspondence.
kingofmen
How long has it been since you needed to mail a physical document to a bank, a government department, or something similar?
SoftTalker
I mailed in my taxes last April, as I always have.
dijit
I live in Sweden, and I can confidently say... Once.
As in, literally as long as I've lived here (11 years now) I mailed one thing by post and it was, somewhat ironically, a self-assessment form for an ADHD diagnosis from a company called Modigo.
I have received a lot of mail though, from the government also, so I'm not sure how that is gonna fly.
WalterBright
I mail documents frequently, but not letters.
dmd
Hours, for me.
grugagag
Mail will arrive straight at the museum
ChrisArchitect
Previously when it was announced earlier this year:
ChrisArchitect
When this came up earlier in the month (Denmark gets ready to cancel Christmas cards https://www.economist.com/europe/2025/11/27/denmark-gets-rea... ) it seemed more like PostNord was just stepping back opening the market up to other 'rivals' to continue service.
Just to clarify. There is at least one chosen and contractually bound Mail Service provider in Denmark. Their terms are set in public tenders. The old state owned company - Post Nord - basically decide not to compete for the contract. A newer company - DAO - won the tender. What this means in legal terms:
Under law: DAO must comply with its postal permit obligations (nationwide service where offered, pricing transparency, quality monitoring). But there is no absolute legal universal delivery duty for all mail anymore.
Under government contract: DAO has a specific binding duty to deliver blind mail as defined in the tender it won - this is a contractual obligation, not a general statutory duty for all mail.
Be mindful that in principle the service provider could chose to not cover certain parts of the country. That has to be clearly stated in their terms of service. The Danish government are expected by the public to continue to subsidize delivery to people with special needs, in the contract identified as "blind mail"